Looking
for a new heatsink for that noisy overheating PC under your desk?

Today Frostytech is testing out Akasa's Venom Nano,
a mid-size tower heatsink that incorporates the popular "heatpipe direct touch"
technique. If you've never heard of this, it
basically means the three copper heatpipes that conduct heat from the CPU
to the aluminum cooling fins are swagged into an aluminum base
and left partially exposed. The idea being that direct conduction of
heat from the CPU to the heatpipes is more efficient than a sandwich
of copper heatspreaders and soldered joints.

It's an approach that that's been enthusiastically picked
up by many heatsink makers because it works quite well so long as the
heatpipes are properly swagged in place. Sometimes they aren't,allowing
the heatpipes to shift after repeated heating & cooling cycles
or remounting. We'll find out how the Venom Nano fairs a little later in
this review when the base is examined against an engineers straight edge.

Akasa's Venom Nano heatsink stands 150mm tall, weighs 560 grams and
installs onto AMD socket AM2/AM3 and Intel socket 775/1156/1366
processors. Off the cuff though, it seems
a little 'modest' for Intel Core i7 use, dito for AMD Black Edition chips. The
Venom Nano seems better suited to mainstream processors as it offers a good
range of quiet operation and ease of installation. Retail price should be in the
neighbourhood of $35 USD/CDN through the usual online
heatsink vendors.

A single
obnoxious yellow 110mm PWM fan is supplied with the
Akasa Venom Nano heatsink. The fan is held in place on the heatsink with four nuclear yellow
vibration absorbing rubber fan posts. The fan scales in speed from 600-2500RPM and in
Frostytech's real world tests that translates to roughly 37dBA to 58dBA noise
levels. Unlike a lot of other heatsinks, the Venom Nano will not accommodate a second
rear-mounted fan.

The rubber
vibration absorbing posts slide into a cylindrical groove punched from the
aluminum fins. The fit is loose enough that the fan is easily removable for
installation, but not so loose as to work free thereafter.

Behind the 110mm diameter fan is a small
plenum formed from the fins concave profile. The aluminum fins are otherwise dead flat - no dimples, no perforations, no edge profiling, no winglets, nada.

Heatsink Mounting Hardware

Akasa's Venom Nano heatsink ships with brackets for Intel LGA775/1156/1366 and AMD AM2/AM3
processors. The heatsink mounts to all Intel sockets using the single metal
bracket pictured below which has grooves for the Intel push-to-click retention tabs
to slide around. This is probably the best adaptation of
the Intel mounting bracket we've seen and a far better option than packaging
three sets of brackets to accommodate socket 775 & 1156 and 1366
motherboards.

For
AMD processors the installation hardware is a little more complex. A metal
support bracket will need to be positioned behind the motherboard, a metal support plate attached to the heatsink base, then four spring-tensioned
retention screws installed with a screwdriver to hold the 560 gram heatsink in
place.

FrostyTech's Test Methodologies are outlined in detail here if you care to know what equipment is used, and the parameters under which the tests are conducted. Now let's move
forward and take a closer look at this heatsink, its acoustic characteristics,
and of course its performance in the thermal
tests!